


Homebase

by Missy



Category: A-Team (TV), A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Attachments to Cars, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Travel, Truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:08:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t supposed to be home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homebase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HippieGeekGirl (GypsyJr)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=HippieGeekGirl+%28GypsyJr%29).



> Birthday fic for Hippiegeekgirl! Enjoy, Becky!

It’s a four-by-four box with wheels, and it looks like a children’s toy as created by a committee of very disturbed 80’s parents. No one knows which one of them managed to dig it up – BA probably crafted it all on his lonesome out of spare parts. These are the keys of a friend of a friend; the rims and shocks a junkyard’s quarry long ago. It belonged to somebody else, to some other time and place, and eventually they would all shed it and go their separate ways.

This is how they thought of the van, until something peculiar happened – it became home.

The van wasn’t quite home, but it felt like it could be on a good night. There was plenty of room to stretch out across the back floor, and if you managed to cram yourself just right between the floorboards you’d have an easy thirty (or fifty) mile ride to the next truck stop.

It contained years of arguments, hours of missed miles and old friends. It smelled like years of barbecue, cartons of Chinese food and, on a rainy day, Murdock’s sweatsocks. The seats were comfortable but not too comfortable; pillows were created from bunched-up jackets, blankets pulled from the glove compartment and used with caution, for there was no telling of their dirty origins. They store their memories in the back of the place, for objects tied to the overhead rack would identify them all too quickly. Most of their things were tied down with ropes, tarped over with bulletproofing, to keep their precious memories from becoming bullet-ridden messes. 

It was as much of a center, as much of a homebase, as any of them had had in years. Murdock had the hospital, but that was no home; just a place he collected his mail, a world where meds were doled out by men in white coats who called him HM. Hannibal had been everywhere, had seemingly seen the entire world in his short fifty years on the planet. An endless parade of addresses strung out behind him, but he hadn’t had a true place to call home in centuries. BA had a real family, a real house in his past, but they didn’t get a warm family feeling with them, not like he felt just sitting around a campfire with the rest of them. And Face – well, he could make himself happy anywhere if he needed to. He could mold himself into an angel or a devil, to blend into the background. He complained the most about how it smelled like a wet dog inside of the van when it rained, and about how much gas it required to operate efficiently, and about how hard it was to dry pashima wool once it had taken a good blast from a carwash’s overhead sprayers. 

But he was the one who missed it when they were apart, missed it even when they were at far-flung ends unable to mend their wholes. He was the one who kept the keys whenever BA had to go undercover. To Face, it was the most important place of all.

The only one where he could be his real self.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **The A-Team** , all of whom are the property of **NBC/Universal**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
